DIVINE PATH
by Hamid lawnmower
Summary: halo 2 side story shdowing the halo 2 campaign


DIVINE PATH

Chapter 1

_**1031, 22OCT2553, Aboard Prophet of Regret's carrier, Earth, New Mombasa**_

Susa' Qulifee checked the covenant flagship duty roster. His name had been highlighted for a banshee patrol around the city center approximately three minutes ago. "Patrols, how tiresome." he sighed to himself and exited the large hallway, heading for the armory. A large hatch door hissed open and the elite slumped into a circular room with alien lockers covering the walls. Around him he saw elites fitting on their personal armor and packing their alien rug sacks with food, radios and of course priceless portable automated scanners.

The alien had already packed his own but still had no power harness on or weapons. After five minutes he was loaded with a plasma rifle, plasma pistol and a handful of supplies if in the unfortunate event of a communication issues. Another hatch hissed open and the elite walked into the huge bay, walkways stretched along the length of the mega-room. He ambled toward a holographic panel and tapped in several controls.

The big energy hatches disappeared and the human city was visible. Plasma Mortar shells exploded in the air above the city's outskirts, taking down human dropships with them. The elite analyzed the horizon of skyscrapers and crawled into a banshee. The anti-grav pods activated and Susa' steered the banshee steadily off the landing pad then boosted out from the ship.

_**1040, same day, on the surface of Old Mombasa**_

"Second squad, this is Cortana. What's your status? Over." Gunnery Sergeant Pete Stacker heard the AI's voice over the intercom and replied,

"We're operational ma'am… barley. Our pilots didn't make it."

One of his corporals gave a swift kick at the side of previously neutralized elite and another cursed at it. The rest of the squad reloaded, and re-equipped.

"Find a hole marine, and stay put. We'll come to you." Cortana ordered and then killed the radio.

"Alright marines, you heard the lady! Gear up, this building looks secure." The sergeant had a crisp Texan accent, and his squad easily recognized it. "Private, you're up front." He gestured to the marine, then another, "Soldier, haul your ass up back to the rear! Everyone else stay in formation and expect hostiles… Move out!"

The six man team climbed up a platform and entered a dark hallway. They switched on their flashlights and dusted the area, no covenant. The then reached what looked to be a hotel reception room when suddenly two men fell under a burst of fire.

Their world turned from calm to utter chaos: "Cover!" the sergeant shouted; he could hear his own heart thunder and echo through his entire body as he watched the two marines rip apart and their leftovers collapse to the ground. Marines scrambled around the room, everything seemed to deafen and the plasma fire thumped into their ears. "Someone identify hostiles!" They all lined up crouching behind a counter, most of the soldiers were too shocked and barley recognized anything around them.

Automatic fired plasma shots hailed down around them. One marine looked to the side only to be welcome by blasts merely inches away from his face. "Sir!" He shouted under his breath, "Turret 6 o'clock!"

"Sniper! Shoot that asshole out!" The sergeant was still panting from exhaustion, his voice could barley be heard over the constant _thump, thump, thump_ of automatic fire. The sniper swerved over the counter and fired one shot from his SRS99C-S2 Sniper Rifle. The Sabot round flew straight and true, puncturing the alien's skull. The elite literally had no head left; his long neck soared over his body squirting purple blood all over the floor. Finally his body fell to the ground, headless, scaring the life out of a blood drenched grunt that suddenly fell to a burst of fire.

"Jesus! Check the downed marines!" Pete muttered. He didn't care about what or who killed the now dead grunt.

"They're both gone sir." One marine said and shook his head sadly. The squad regrouped and saw a seven foot figure of a man appear from a trail of smoke. He walked forward; his rifle raised high, blazing smoke exuding from the nozzle. They couldn't even tell if he was human from under his blood drenched, scratched and burned, green, bulky armor. But the Sergeant knew that he was a Spartan, not just any Spartan but the one that he had fought alongside on Halo and The Pillar of Autumn. He was a survivor and a hero. He was Spartan-117, the Master Chief.

The banshee tilted to the left and swooped down, merely missing a huge skyscraper. Susa' Qulifee was a very reckless pilot when impatient; anyone watching him fly would think he was blind, or just downright insane. Most elites were trained until they were vice aces, but this particular alien had been born with some kind of shock syndrome in his right hand which made his aim bad and his flying skills awful. He got so used to being a bad driver that when his hand finally healed he continued that way.

Not even the countless times he'd flown himself almost to death got him to at least _try_ to be more cautious. He checked the banshees built in clock: 11:20 local time, ninth age of reclamation.

It had been 40 minutes in patrol around the human city. There was an extensive amount of movement on the bridge; he had been tracking the battlenet and apparently a human had pushed through the old suburbs and was now heading in one of the human behemoths across the bridge to the city center. All covenant patrols were ordered to eliminate the human onsite. Susa' was very curious to why this human had made it so far, also he just received news that this _filthy infidel_ had destroyed a sacred ring.

So if Susa' Qulifee had managed to kill this alien he would probably move up from his plain blue armor to the rank of zealot. 'Yes' he thought. He wanted to command the patrols, not execute them. He wanted to lead the charges not follow them. He wondered if his fuel rod cannon would kill the human, it was likely it would but he was a lousy aim and a horrible pilot.

Susa' steered the ship around, tapped in a few controls and then saw the main display zoom in 400%. The tank almost took up one third of the screen, it had no anti-air weapons but one human riding on the tracks was wielding a rocket launcher. 'This,' Susa' thought 'is going to be a _real _fight.' The display returned to normal view and he saw a blue explosion, followed by another and trails of smoke.

The Master Chief fired another salvo of shells at the wraith that just burned the marine riding on the treads. It detonated with savage force, scarring a ghost and injuring a nearby elite. Riding in a scorpion was like hiding in a bomb shelter, explosions would shake the entire cockpit and small arms fire would bounce of the titanium-alloy armor. The 66 ton monster steadied forward at a turtle's pace. The chief fired its machine gun at the wounded elite, and then used the 60mm cannon to finish off the ghost.

The built-in radar tracked two fast moving signatures incoming, one from the back of the tank and the other coming straight at it from the left. The left-coming banshee descended a few feet as if preparing to bomb the tank using its rod cannon, which is exactly what Susa' Qulifee was planning. The chief rotated the main turret and halted the tank; he needed the accuracy even though a stationary target was very vulnerable to air attack. But he risked it because the plane would probably still hit him even if he was mobile, and plus, he_ also_ had a better chance of hitting the target.

The two enemies were only 20ft apart, the Chief, though, fired first. Susa' saw the tanks turret shoot, that moment seemed to last forever; his entire world slowed down and he waited for the shell to puncture the armor and rip his body into millions of tiny shreds. The projectile slammed into the base of the assault craft, the armor luckily withstood the impact but parts of burned out armor sprinkled the air. Susa' felt his heart stop, finally, for the first time in his military life, a stroke of luck. The banshee shifted up a meter due to the force of the impact.

The Spartan cursed at the enemies luck and tried to rotate the turret so he could fire again at the smoking and fleeing banshee, but the bulky gun shifted too slowly. Susa' fled (a very uncommon thing for an elite) with most of the weapons and navigational systems of his aircraft knocked out but the alien ship still had enough power to boost out from the scene.

The Master Chief ignored that banshee and focused on the other that started firing at the back base of the tank. Because the turret was facing forward there was no time to counter-attack a rear target, so practically his best chance was to move forward so the banshee might miss and fire at the ground; but it was too late. A green, sparkling and radioactive comet buzzed over the sea and landed home on the tank: a huge lime explosion lighted up the entire surrounding and damaged the tank so severely that even the Master Chiefs shield went down. The whole tank shook like a lawnmower and almost lifted off the ground.

The Banshee soared over the explosion; put some length between the two and circled back around for another attack. John struggled to regain control of the situation; he rotated the turret clockwise and saw the banshee closing in like a wasp. He wasn't going to wait for it to get close; in fact he didn't wait at all and fired two shells at the banshee. The first missed but the second blew off the wing and the ensuing impact forced the banshee to wobble off course and reveal its unarmored left side. The chief fired the cannon again, followed by hundreds of armor piercing bullets. Satisfaction filled the spartan's emotions as he witnessed the banshee explode; the pilot drop from it with no head or leg and the banshee explode again as it crashed into a light post.

After what seemed like hours of back-breaking ghost-blasting, wraith crushing and elite-ripping the Spartan finally reached the other side of the bridge. Cortana said something about a 'welcoming party' as he saw a checkpoint barricade and an open highway tunnel identical to the one he just came from. He saw 4 ghost and 2 wraiths waiting at the barricades and two banshees emerge from the 20 meter high roof of the tunnel.

'Why is it,' he thought, 'that all my objectives always require me having to fight trough legions of alien assholes and at the end I don't accomplish that objective and am given a new task?' He already knew the answer to that: his objectives were always insane no matter what the situation: Destroy Halo, Escape from flood infested dungeons, capture a prophet… and on the list went of all the primary (and near-impossible) objectives he had ever gotten in his entire military career.

Susa' felt his left leg burning. The left fin of the banshee was smoking from the temperature of the malfunctions inside its system caused by the blast. He had to do something before his leg was burned down to a nub. He didn't dare to slow down, for all he knew that human could of hi-jacked another banshee.

As he whooshed past the tunnel cluster he tracked two banshees engage an enemy contact at the end of the bridge, a big enemy contact. He cursed under his breath at the failure of the attack as the two friendly contacts flashed red and disappeared from his radar. Susa' decided that he lost the fight. Just as he was about to slow down and land on a open field of grass (one of the city's many public parks) the banshee's display flashed and disappeared, he heard a low humming sound as the systems shut down and then felt the banshee enter freefall.

Susa' Qulifee hanged on for his life, the pilot protection flap above him malfunctioned and tore away, leaving the elites body vulnerable to the piercing shrill air. He didn't dare let go or move any part of his body. For a moment the air cooled down his foot and he felt comfortable but that moment was short-lived as he felt the banshee (what remained of it) tilt upward, He let go and saw the aircraft crash through a building's window. The explosion following three seconds after the elite crashed into the same window, fell three stories down and smashed, feet first into a fountain at the ground floor of the building.

Something hurt in his stomach, he vision blurry as the half-awake elite drifted in and out of consciousness. His eyes stung and he shut them, all around him he felt something, a liquid and at that instance he realized he wasn't breathing. Susa' sprung out of the fountain, spat out water and breathed his first since the three minutes he spent asleep, without air, submerged in a 10 ft deep fountain. He wondered how he was still alive, how he got here and why his left leg throbbed so painfully.

He crawled out of the fountain, feeling so light headed as he fell to his knees and collapsed. The blue armored elite rested on the floor, panting heavily, and started to remember: The tank, the explosion and the fleeing. The malfunctions, the dive and the crash.

He regained strength and his hearing returned. To his left a slab of scrap metal burned in a bright blue that hurt his eyes. The elite stood up slowly and looked around: A huge hole in the ceiling and the two above it caused by the banshee, a passageway leading outside and holographic displays that lined around the fountain. As he limped toward the exit he realized he still had his weapons and supplies attached to his power harness. Susa' Qulifee activated his energy shield and sighed in relief as the shield recharged.

Although the pain in his leg kept stabbing at him he managed to keep a good posture as he walked the abandoned street. The road had holes dented in it and cars lay with fires blazing inside their engines. He saw a skyscraper to his left had been what seemed to be, completely glassed. He activated his alien PDA, auto-scanner, radar and radio. They all worked fine except for the radio: he wondered if it was not water-proof or maybe the impact just shut it down.

"This, is not your average patrol." He sighed to himself. He slumped his way across the middle of the road that led to a three-way intersection. He felt like he was walking in a ghost town, signs flashed: EMERGENCY EVACUATION, sprawl human bodies on the streets and lots of small, controlled fires with, smoke bristling from buildings and craters burnt into the sidewalks.

His rifle raised high, Susa' Qulifee rounded to the left and followed another street to what seemed to be the city's central police station. He hoped somewhere in there he could hijack a human aircraft or at least one of those four-wheeled trucks he'd seen humans driving. Now that this patrol wasn't really a patrol he had to escape and get back to the carrier to report.

But he had to avoid the same route he came from to stop himself from encountering the human. Although he had vowed to die fighting for his covenant, Susa' took this particular oath very, very lightly. He never had wanted to join the covenant military, but he was forced to because he was Shanghelli. He was religious and did believe in The Great Journey but he had his own ideas. You could say it was hearsay but no one knew about his unorthodox beliefs.

For a second the elite thought about joining the Heretics, leaving High Charity and … no he shook that thought away and concentrated on escape from this god forsaken human hive. There _could_ be two-legged resistance in the police garrison but he doubted it, this part of the city seemed to be completely deserted. Still he wouldn't take the risk and moved silently and swiftly. He wished he had active camouflage, which would help.

The front gate was dented and he easily pushed the left door with his foot, storming in a courtyard with both his rifle and pistol in his hands, nothing. There was a one story building; he exited the courtyard through a dark passageway adjacent to the block. He came across a large garage and dome-like tent. Inside the tent were a couple of human IFF transponders a M6C magnum sidearm and a radio that seemed to be plugged into a generator beside the tent. He picked up the pistol, aimed it at the radio and pulled the trigger: The radio exploded in a sharp and loud _**BOOM**_!

'Only the radio…' He thought '…my own pistol would have burned the wire and blown out the generator.' He grunted to himself and exited the tent. The garage was spacey, with parking slots and fuel stations. He noted a group of tires at the left corner, and some four-wheelers with anti-air guns attached to their backs. No aircraft, but the Warthogs would do fine. He sighed in relief as he jumped in the truck and it started up. He had to find another means of transport, maybe a Phantom, Banshee or even a Vampire. For now, though he had to use this primitive wheeled crate. Again he sighed to himself: "Patrols, how tiresome."

The Master Chief, Pvt. James and Cpl. Diana crept up to a stray jackal at the edge of a cliff; John crouched and assassinated the jackal with the butt of his M90 shotgun. One of the marines cheered and a grunt manning a turret on the far garrisoned platform fired wildly at the humans. "Get down!" the Chief ordered in his iron-hard voice. The marines did what he said and took cover behind a boulder that once was cover to a now sprawl marine sniper. The body had a very sharp and small burning hole as if it had been stabbed with an overheated needle.

The Chief joined the marines, careful not to step on the body. He said some kind of prayer for the dead human, slung the shotgun and picked up his sniper rifle. The covenant garrisoned onto of a group of connected platforms being circled by a M12GI warthog LAAV, alien crates were positioned all over the platforms that connected to the 20ft cliff by a long cable bridge.

Not too far the Spartan could see his rivalry scarab walk over a dome structure that co-joined with the one he was in. Returning his attention to the fight the chief armed the S2 AMB rifle, jumped up from the cover, aimed and fired three rounds. The grunt and two unsuspecting jackal snipers collapsed. '_This_ is for killing the marine' He thought as he launched another round into the skull of yet _another _jackal sniper. The chief reloaded and ordered the marines to follow. They ran across the rounded cliff to the bridge. The three soldiers took cover behind a large triangle structure that arched over the foot of the catwalk. The chief swung the rifle along the length of his back and equipped the shotgun, only 7 shells left.

He couldn't kill all those aliens with only 7 shells so he turned to the leathernecks. "Marines, I'll go in, you two cover me, here take this." He handed the sniper rifle over to Private James and he, in return, gave the Spartan his BR55 battle rifle. "I hope you're a good sniper, once that garrison is ours I'll take control of that warthog and–" The chief was interrupted by a loud explosion, the two marines watched in horror as the burning warthog flipped over and over until it landed on the cliff face, slid down and exploded again. A few feet from where the explosion started a burnt out and mutilated marine body lay sprawl, face-down on the ground.

"…Maybe not" Cpl. Diana added.

"Okay…" The Chief continued, "…Change of plans; once we take that garrison we'll Hi-jack those two damn ghosts that just blew up our warthog."

"So one of us is going to have to walk?" Pvt. James complained.

The Chief nodded and gestured for them to get ready. He raised the rifle and marched across the bridge, taking down a sniper with a burst from the rifle. Two elites and a grunt on the lower left platform fired on the chief in union. He crouched down and rolled to the side behind a support pillar. The red armored elite yelled in pain as a Sabot round punctured his ribs, it didn't kill him but the following burst of fire from the Master Chief did.

The Chief primed a grenade and tossed it with a graceful underarm throw. It bounced twice and then exploded in a display of red orange inferno. The remaining elite was thrown into the air and landed onto the ground below the platforms, the grunt fared no better: its limbs were blown and its body shattered in half like a cracker.

The chief heard the marines cheer and a squad of jackals and grunts run, scream and cower as if they were possessed. The leather necks joined the chief behind the pillar, Diana shot down a hiding grunt with her SMG and James along with John cut down two jackal's right in their tracks.

"So much for a garrison!" James yelled only to be replied with a burst of plasma fire from the first ghost. The three humans jumped onto a higher platform and took cover behind three crates and an alien reactor. The Master Chief saw the two ghosts in a line firing short burst as if not to waste energy. He knew a ghost boosting uses power from the weapon ports and could not fire at the same time, which makes a ghost vulnerable to counter attacks.

"If only I had a rocket launcher." The Chief whispered to himself.

"Stay here marines!" The chief ordered as he jumped over the crates and fired into the ghosts to grab their attention away from the marines. The Spartan and his bulky MJOLNIR mark six withstood two dozen direct hits as he leaped crouched and rolled his way to the ground and off the platforms.


End file.
